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| The Secret to Great Presentations: ENTHUSIASM |
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- The Secret to Great Presentations
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By Doug Staneart
If you take only one piece of advice about
public speaking, make sure that it is this
pearl of wisdom. If you focus on this one
simple thing, the number of times you say
"uhm" won't matter. If you focus
on this one thing, your gestures and not
knowing what to do with your hands won't
matter. If you focus on this one thing, then
the occasional loss of train of thought won't
matter. In fact, if you focus on this one
simple thing, you can break just about every
rule that public speakers are supposed to
abide by, and you will still win over your
audience.
This one simple rule has transformed
countless
mediocre speakers into good speakers,
scores
of good speakers into great speakers,
and
numerous great speakers into world-class
speakers.
This simple rule that can make or break
a
speaker is… ENTHUSIASM.
That's right, if you have a little
excitement
in your talk and a spring in your step,
people
pay attention. Your audience will have
just
about as much excitement about your
talk
as you do, and no more. So, if you
want to
win over your audience, add a sparkle
of
enthusiasm.
One of my mentors told me that there
are
two rules to live by in the world of
professional
speakers. She said, "Rule number
one
is to never speak on a topic that you
yourself
are not enthusiastic about, and rule
number
two is that if you ever violate rule
number
one, fake it 'til you make it."
Frank Bettger in his book How I Raised
Myself
from Failure to Success in Selling
said it
a different way. He said, "If
you act
enthusiastic, then you'll be enthusiastic."
For those of us who get nervous in
front
of groups, it's even easier. In the
previous
chapter I pointed out that 90% of our
nervousness
doesn't even show. Let's look at the
other
10%. When we are nervous, we often
cut out
preambles and get right to the point,
our
rate of speech typically speeds up,
we tend
to move around a lot more, and we may
move
our hands around more than normal.
Well,
when we are excited about something,
we do
the exact same things.
Years ago, when I was a sales manager,
I
was often amazed at the number of times
that
a brand new sales person without a
lot of
product knowledge and absolutely no
experience,
could close sale after sale while my
more
seasoned people were struggling. The
more
times I went on sales calls with these
new
people, the more I started to notice
a pattern.
New salespeople are often nervous,
so when
they walk into an office on a sales
call,
they tend to cut right to the chase.
They
also generally talk faster because
they are
afraid they'll forget something. They
have
a tough time sitting still because
of the
nervousness, so they move around a
lot.
I noticed that these symptoms of nervousness
worked to the advantage of these new
salespeople,
because their prospects looked across
the
table at salespeople who appeared to
be extremely
enthusiastic about what they were selling.
I would imagine that these potential
buyers
were saying things to themselves like,
"if
this person believes so much in this
product,
it must be good."
We as speakers can also use our nervousness
to our advantage. When we turn that
pent
up nervousness into energy and enthusiasm,
our audience can't help but be energized
as well.
Doug Staneart is President of The Leader's Institute, leadership and public speaking training. He can be reached by e-mail at doug@leadersinstitute.com or toll-free at 1-800-872-7830 x-100.
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